Small, powerful and affordable, with a SIRF StarIII chipset for quick GPS signal acquisition, the Magellan RoadMate 2000 makes it easier than ever to get where you need to go. Simple touch-screen menus and 40 built-in, interactive maps of the contiguous United States let you select virtually any destination and enjoy voice and visual turn-by-turn directions as you drive. A fully-featured vehicle navigation system with built-in maps, a SirfstarIII chipset, and nearly 1.3 million pre-programmed points of interest. See unit in detail or see a product demonstration (requires Flash). Detailed information is displayed for all trips. A turn-by-turn voice and visual guidance system allows you to get to your location quickly [Read More...]
Buy Magellan RoadMate 2000 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator at Amazon
This GPS system is fairly cheap and does most of the things you would want a GPS unit to do - get you from point A to point B. Basically, that’s all I really wanted when I bought this unit and I am happy to say that it has been pretty successful in doing that. I had a little trouble at the start because it wouldn’t lock-in my route and always had “Proceed to Route” on the screen even though I was already on the road and moving to my destination.
Having said that, this machine has a few annoying issues. First, it sometimes just restarts automatically and could leave you hanging if you have to turn or something. Second, it gets lost when you are surrounded by tall buildings. Hence, you have to be sure that you know the turn-by-turn directions prior to entering business districts, etc. Finally, it’s “shortest time” route may not be the optimal route every time. I went on a trip to Milwaukee to Chicago and the GPS took me through rural Northwestern Illinois, which increased the travel time home from 2 hours to 3 hours. I don’t know what happened there, but be sure to check the route before you embark on a long trip (I learned this lesosn the hard way).
For city driving, I think this unit is fine. It has gotten me to most places without any real issues. It’s also cheap, which is good for reluctant first-time buyers. After you get a GPS unit though, you will surely ask yourself why you didn’t get one any sooner.
I bought this GPS device in the black Friday’s sale from Best Buy. I drove about 200 miles with it. This is my experience.
Pros:
1. Small size. The device is quite small. The 3.5-inch screen occupies most of the face. It’s only as deep as a cigarette package. The portability is nice.
2. Ease of use. There is only one button on the side of the device. User’s input is all through the touch screen. There is a product manual. But the only time you need to read the manual is about how to unlock the device the very first time you use it. After that, everything is intuitive and user friendly.
3. Receiver chip. It uses SiRFstar III receiver chip, the latest microcontroller chip from the world’s largest GPS chip manufacture. This chip is used by other GPS devices, which can be 3 times as expensive as Magellan RoadMate 2000. Since the receiver chip is the single most important factor determining a GPS’s positioning capability. Compared with other GPS devices, there shouldn’t be complaints on the accuracy and signal acquiring speed since they are all using the the same chip.
Cons:
1. Random crash. It happened twice to me since I bought it and drove with it. The first time, I was in the middle of some operation on the screen. The second time, it just crashed when I made a sharp turn on a simple local road. When it crashes, it will reboot automatically and resume the route in totally 4 or 5 seconds. There is really no influence on using it unless you need the direction right at that time. However, this can be annoying.
2. Failure to direct on the go. Today my friend drove me from my home to a nearby airport. I turned on the GPS while we were on the road. It acquired signals in 3 to 4 minutes (reasonable for a cold start) and calculated the right directions. However, it consistently asked me to “proceed to the route”, which means to the GPS device I wasn’t on the right route to the destination although we were driving precisely on the freeway suggested by the GPS. As a result, it wouldn’t give us any turning guidance, although I could see the arrow moving on the correct highway. I am not sure what caused the issue. And I will try later to see if I could duplicate it. But this is a quite serious flaw because when it happens, the GPS device is totally useless except that it shows where you are. I really hope they can release a firmware update to fix this as soon as possible.
3. Crude interface. The interface seems to me quite crude. The color scheme is harsh and lines are jagged. Although it doesn’t affect the usage at all, I hope it can be more appalling to people’s eyes.
In general, I’d say this is an OK GPS device. On the hardware side, there are really no much complaints. But on the software side, there are some serious things to be ironed out. I only wish they can release the updates soon to fix the problems before I can recommend this device without any reservation.